Welcome to Year 2

Sports Day!

We loved our Year 2 sports day! We started the day by visiting the Junior field to take part in different races. It was so fun cheering for each other! In the afternoon our grown ups joined us for our activity afternoon. It was brilliant to get our grown ups involved with all of the different activities in the sunshine!

Year 2 Whitstable RNLI trip

We had an amazing trip to Whitstable, visiting the RNLI station and learning all about how the charity helps people in trouble out at sea. We also spent time sketching the boats near the harbour and even had a play on the beach! The children were all incredibly well behaved and showed respect throughout our trip.

Year 2 Cathedral Trip

We had a wonderful trip to Canterbury Cathedral with St Alphege School children to celebrate our time at the infants! We toured the Cathedral, taking time to pause and reflect at different places and we looked in awe and wonder at all the beautiful stained glass windows. We then had a special service in the crypt lead by Archdeacon Will where we reflected on the theme of ‘bravery’ and we said prayers of thanks for our time at the infants and prayers of hope for the future.

Music

This term we have enjoyed learning two new instruments – the ocarina and the boomwhackers!  We learnt to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star accurately on the ocarina and worked hard to hone our skills by varying the tempo and dynamics. We learnt to follow simple symbols and to draw symbols to represent different notes that we played. We worked in groups to create our own song, carefully recording on paper what we were playing so that other groups could play our song too.  We also learnt how to play different melodies on the boomwhackers by varying the tempo and dynamics.

Hockey

This term we have really enjoyed learning to play hockey! We have learnt how to hold and use hockey sticks to control the ball and we have enjoyed learning how to pass the ball accurately to our team mates. We developed our communication skills when working in teams to score lots of goals and we’ve loved playing class hockey matches!

Coronation Celebration

We have really enjoyed the build up to the King’s Coronation. We have been learning all about King Charles III, including how he has been a pilot and loves to paint pictures. We all wore red, white and blue to school and loved making our own royal crowns for our party lunch. It was great fun to have whole school COOL time on the playground in the afternoon with royally themed activities!

Book Week

We really enjoyed Book Week, where we used the story 'Professional Crocodile' by Giovanna Zoboli and Mariachara Di Giorgio to theme our learning. We linked the story with our English and Art learning across the week. Some of our favourite activities during the week were using viewfinders to draw specific parts of illustrations, narrating the wordless book with our own ideas and writing our own story about a 'professional' animal! We went on a trip to Whitstable and linked up with St Alphege school where we worked together to create a HUGE collage crocodile and we enjoyed visiting Whitstable library to hear a fun story read to us by one of the librarians.

Circus Day!

We had a fantastic circus day! Our day started with an amazing show where Lucas Jett performed lots of tricks and acrobatic skills. We loved the juggling and were very impressed with how he rode the unicycle! We then enjoyed learning our own circus skills using spinning plates, diablos and flower sticks.

Great Fire of London

This term our theme has been ‘The Great Fire of London’. We have learnt all about the history of this event, as well as linking this theme to our Writing, Art, Music, Science and Outdoor Learning lessons, engaging with a variety of cross curricular activities. We enjoyed learning about Tudor houses, walking down into Herne village to sketch a real Tudor house. We then used this to create a more detailed drawing, using different grades of pencils and techniques. We also used our knowledge of Tudor houses to make our own, which we then burnt in the Hive to demonstrate how quickly the fire spread. In Science we explored flammable and non-flammable materials, linking to the materials used to make Tudor houses. In Music we learnt the song ‘London’s Burning’ and we sung it in rounds!

Outdoor Learning

This term we have been learning how to build dens during our Outdoor Learning sessions! In particular, we have been focusing on making dog kennel shelters using man made materials such as tarpaulin. We enjoyed testing whether our dens were suitable by pouring water on top while we sheltered underneath!

Curtis Woods Walk

We really enjoyed our walk to Curtis woods this term. We were looking for signs of spring beginning and took a moment to pause to see what we could hear. There was some very squelchy mud that we almost got stuck in!

Amazing Africa

This term our theme in Year 2 has been 'Amazing Africa'. We have been learning about a small place called Homa Bay which is in Kenya (Africa) and we have compared it to where we live in Herne Bay which is in England (Europe). We have been exploring the similarities and differences, focusing on physical and human features, and we have used a variety of resources such as google maps, atlases, globes, photos and videos to develop our understanding further. We have also immersed ourselves in a variety of exciting cross curricular activities linked to our theme of 'Amazing Africa'. We have learnt how to play the djembe drum and sung African songs in Music, created fact files about African animals in our writing sessions and also explored a traditional African tale called 'Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain'. We have also immersed ourselves in this theme in Art, creating African warrior masks, African necklaces, silhouette sunset pictures of African animals and our own stencil with African patterns to create a repeating print.
 

PE - Team Building 

This term we have worked hard to improve our team building skills during outdoor PE. Each week we have played new games and worked with different friends to solve problems and complete challenges. We have particularly enjoyed playing ‘Cross the river’, ‘Sharks’ and ‘Connections’. We have thought about how good listening can help in team building as well as patience, communication and perseverance.

ICT - Our Computing Skills!

We have really enjoyed visiting the computer suite each week this term to develop our ICT skills! We have learnt how to log in to the computer independently, how to use Kid Rex to safely make searches on the internet and how to navigate Education City and Purple mash. We have also spent time familiarising ourselves with where the letters and numbers are located on a keyboard in order to develop our typing skills. During our final session, we discussed the differences between technology based work and paper based activities and we created wonderful Christmas pictures using our controlled mouse skills on 2Paint!

Bonfire Night Theme Day!

In November, we had our very own Bonfire Night theme day in Year 2! We learnt all about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder plot and the history behind why we celebrate firework night. We learnt about bonfire, firework and sparkler safety and we enjoyed creating some fantastic firework artwork! We used our fire building skills to make our own bonfire and we toasted marshmallows which were delicious! We also got to light sparklers and wave them on the playground! We all had a fantastic time!

Art – Colour Mixing

In Art we have loved exploring colour mixing! We have learnt about primary and secondary colours and made our own colour wheels. We also experimented with adding black to paint to see what would happen and noticed the colour became darker. We also made a colour chart to show how a colour becomes lighter when white paint is added.

COOL Time

During our COOL time we continue the learning that we have been doing throughout the week and enjoy practising / showing the different characteristics of effective learning.  We have really enjoyed exploring all of the amazing resources that we have available to support the development of our social and communication skills, such as board games, marble runs, wooden blocks, train sets and Lego etc.  We have particularly enjoyed the Travel Agent role play areas within our classrooms this term!

Music – Instruments and Musicianship

This term we have enjoyed exploring a range of tuned and untuned instruments in the music room and finding out how to play them effectively. We focussed on rhythm and learnt to repeat simple rhythms on a range of percussion instruments. We learnt about quavers, crotchets, minims and semibreves and how musical notation is a visual representation of how long each note lasts and we enjoyed creating our own rhythms using these musical notes.